


Of Virtues and Vice

by Insuffer6la (CrimsonShades)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Albino Vantas, Anal Sex, Blowjobs, Cronus is sketchy, Dubious Consent, Humanstuck, Kankri is a workaholic, M/M, Office Sex, Prostitution, Seduction, TW: Run-on sentences, self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 15:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11360355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonShades/pseuds/Insuffer6la
Summary: "Thing is, if you wanna get laid in today's world, you need to invest some money. Dates are usually about taking them out to grab a bite and see a movie, right? The more you spend, the better your chances. But considering your situation, I'd be doing you twice the favor if I just fucked you senseless and gave you the cash right then and there, so you can watch a movie or eat something or pay your loans and the choice is yours, you dig? Win-win.""That's apalling. That's literally prostitution.""I mean," he shrugs his shoulders, "It's the world's oldest business."





	Of Virtues and Vice

You never thought you'd sink that low.  
Your name is Kankri Vantas and you are undoubtedly a person of flawless virtuosity. You only recently graduated with your Master's degree in hand and ready to unleash yourself and your newly certificated abilities in Psychology to make the world a better place with your own two hands. Starting with one of the largest companies in the world, who were glad to take you in. Right they were. You were convinced that as soon as you got promoted to head of Human Resources, which was only a matter of time, you would improve the working environment of every single employee and the world would follow suit.  
You are strong, proud, unstoppable and an ambassador of social justice.  
But most of all, you are a scrawny, five foot nothing young adult in your mid twenties who was two weeks into his job as underpaid intern with nothing but your big dreams and a promise to hire you as soon as a position opened up keeping you there.  
Well, that and the student loan you constantly feel breathing down your neck. You'd very much like to know that no longer being an issue haunting you. But for now, all you can do is work every chance you get, from early in the mornings to late at night, do everything you can to make yourself anything between well-liked and inexpensable to your coworkers, which strike you as okay enough people, and spend as little time as possible in the place you share with Porrim, an Arts Major you befriended in university and who was kind enough to let you stay in her apartment until you can afford your own place. Yet another goal to work towards, because private space is very important to you.   
Spacious and well-lit, as Porrim's may be, you always just coop yourself up in the tiny room you call your own, your refugee from the world that is soaked with the scent of blueberry detergent, emitted by your bedsheets, mainly, the same kind your old crush used and you keep buying out of habit, even though that was a thing that came and pretty much died within your very first semester. You still like the smell.  
Porrim is okay, although a bit nosy and a lot smothering in your opinion. Having grown up without a mother makes it very difficult for you to deal with her acting like one, but the fact of the matter is that she is the only person you have in your life, ever since you moved away from your father and brother to study and pursue your dreams of global improvement. That doesn't mean you have to stay around her all the time however, you think, which is exactly why you were still sitting in your cubicle, relatively plain by comparison to those of your coworkers, which are littered with photographs and even decorative plants and other trinkets, you only have two piles of paperwork, the pile you have finished working on and the pile you are yet to do, which, after a long day of hard work, has significantly shrunken down, not that you'd plan to leave before having erased it out of existence entirely, a sticker of a bright red cartoon crab your brother sent you and your laptop which you are fiercely typing away at. Data from the sheets to analyze and chart for your superiors. It's tiring work, it's boring, it's streams of endless numbers to put into Excel files and later feed into a more professional program to rob these plain numbers of all their secrets.  
Despite the dreariness of it all, despite the stuffy office air you have been breathing all day, despite the fact that it's approaching ten pm, dark out and you're kind of hungry, your limbs are aching and a dull throbbing is starting up in the back of your head, your body's way of telling you to lay down and get some rest already, you are still going strong. Three more pages of numbers and you're done. You can do this.  
The only other person still here is Horuss Zahhak. He works in the same department, has a cubicle on the other side of the room that is filled with pictures of horses, now more than ever, since he tore down the photographs of his boyfriend about three days ago, when he had been surprisingly broken up on - it came out of nothing, he had assured you in the worker's lounge, as he was sobbing into his palms and you fetched him tea and even a half-empty box of stale cookies you'd found rummaging through the kitchen. He works to drown out his sorrow and to distract himself. Part of you wonders if you and him are truly so different. Two workaholics with motivations that can be boiled down to your lack of social life entirely that you are trying to forget about.  
Except, of course, you have big plans. For yourself, but mostly the world. A dreadfully unfair place, you find. Ever since middle school have you had ambitions to change it. Your work on tumblr has gone woefully unnoticed by the masses and the community itself, not even the SJW movement was too happy to interact with you, despite your fierce support of their cause. So you decided to approach the situation from a different angle.  
By the time you are down to one page of numbers, and so dehydrated that they are starting to blur in front of your eyes, you hear the door open and someone shuffle inside.  
Your gazes darts to Horuss' cubicle, he's still there, then the clock, quarter past ten, weird, who'd be here at a time like this, then the door. You have never seen the man standing there before in your life.  
He's taller than you, which then again, isn't very telling, you feel as though the majority of the population is, with jet black hair that is slicked back with such ridiculous amounts of gel, you can see white lumps of it sticking to his hairline, two lightning bolt-shaped scars on his forehead which involuntarily trigger some memories of when you were a child reading Harry Potter under the covers with a flashlight, because it'd been way past your bedtime - the air there had been similarly stuffy as the recycled, filtered, faultily air conditioned soup of previous exhales you are breathing right now, tight clothes stretched taut over his visible muscles to show off his toned body - you can feel the word "ableist" forming on your lips -, and steel blue eyes darting around the spacey room as though he's looking for something. Once he spots you however, you can see his lips tug into a smirk, revealing a row of unbelievably white teeth and feel reminded of that time you stayed up late to watch a documentary on sharks - until your brother poked his bedhead down the stairs and implored you, with all the charme of a punch in the gut, to "go the fuck to sleep already" because the flickering lights under his door were bothering him somehow.  
You have a history with staying up late, you realize. Perhaps if you slept more, the bags under your eyes wouldn't be quite so dark, less stark in contrast to your already incredibly pale skin.  
The man had approached you and as soon as his hand comes to rest on the white plastic wall that marks the borders of your cubicle so he can lean uncomfortably close into your private space, you stand up. It strikes you as polite, even though you only reach up to his chest, despite him being propped to the side a little to support himself more comfortably against your also white desk, but also to stand your ground and defend your space. The latter sentiment was more subconscious than an actually formulated-thought.  
His eyes never left you and the predatory gaze makes you ball your hands into fists, only to release them again, because body language is important. He seems important. The air he gives off certainly is.  
You raise an eyebrow at him.  
"Can I help you?"  
You don't like the way he looks at you at all. There's something intense to his gaze that you haven't come across before, despite being fairly used to attracting all attention within a ten foot radius, especially on public transport, which you depend on, because cars are expensive, you dont drive and frankly refuse to ask Porrim to give you a lift. So you more often than not find yourself learning timetables by heart and then squeezing yourself in between strangers that look at you like you're the last of an endangered animal. You have grown somewhat used to it with time, though you still cannot appreciate it in the slightest. But you are similarly aware of there being nothing in your power to change the staring. Suffering from albinism is simply a fate every Vantas male, as far as you know, has to endure. The stares just come with it, there is no helping it. Stares and very vicious sunburn from doing nothing but looking in the general direction of up for three seconds. Perhaps you wouldn't spend so much time cooped up indoors if you didn't burn up every time you went outside, or had to spend half an hours meticulously covering your white skin with sunscreen. Meanwhile, every member of your family has found their way of dealing with this predicament. Your brother dyed his white hair black to not stick out like a sore thumb amongst his peers, which only made his red-eyed gazes more intense, your father uses it as a great excuse to preach equality to his community and you simply kindly inform everyone you find staring for a bit too long, that it's rude to look at people like that. Because nothing makes people stop paying attention to you faster than opening your mouth to talk to them. Your speeches may be a little bit long-winded, but then again, if people are going to be rude enough to stare at you enough to practically drill holes into your skin, they likely are not going to possess the politeness required to actually listen to someone talking to them. Society in its current form. How you dread it.  
"Can you get me a map?" The man purrs. His breath smells like smoke. "Cause I got lost in your eyes."  
For the first time since you learned how to speak words - with the small exception of those few weeks when you were trying to talk to Latula Pyrope - you find yourself at loss for words. Your eyes narrow, your lips curve into a frown and you search the man's face for a cue that he is, must be, joking.  
"Excuse me?" Is all you manage for the time being and he chuckles.  
"If you're looking for your jacket, we put it up in the kitchen." Horuss pipes up helpfully from the corner. The man gives you another intense stare that makes you feel almost violated, cracks another smile and makes his way to the small kitchenette in the back of the department that's hardly more than a sink, a microwave oven, coffee machine and a fridge that is usually filled with day-old sandwiches and microwave dinners that have names scribbled on them in big, angry letters with permanent markers. You don't participate in sharing food space with your coworkers, because something tells you that some people rely on that exclusively and take other's food rather than prepare their own, if the death glares regularly shot around during lunch breaks are any indication.  
"Thanks."  
"Don't mention it. He drops by every once in a while to hit on the workers. It's disgusting, really. He always makes sure to leave something behind to have an excuse to come back, too." Horuss shrugs and pushes his round glasses back up to the root of his nose. They magnify his watery dark blue eyes enough for you to be able to see the annoyance in his expression from your cubicle.  
"Really? That's utterly deplorable. Has no one ever filed a complaint? I'm fairly certain this qualifies as sexual harassment."  
Horuss shakes his head and you hear him make the faintest huffing sound as he adjusts one of his photos of a horse.  
"He's a bisexual, what do you expect?"  
You feel your eyebrow quirk up and your scalp tingle. It's not an unfamiliar sensation at all and before you can even think about it, you hear yourself ask "What is that supposed to mean?"  
Your coworker shrugs his shoulders and huffs. "Aren't they all disloyal and undependable whores who are indecisive as they are promiscuous? If they were picky at all, they would settle for one thing, after all."  
"I cannot believe you to be sprouting such biphobic nonsense! Have you not considered the triggering potential of such derogatory hatespeech? Bisexuals are not confused, nor are they in any way more promiscuous than those with differing orientations. This sort of commentary is unfounded and offensive to just about everyone with a sexuality and more than two functioning brain cells! Are you even listening to yourself? Which is why I hereby consider it my duty to inform you that I cannot let such verbal transgressions slide. It definitely needs to be pointed out that such radioactive language is absolutely the worst kind of well-poisoning which is nothing but counterproductive to any and all forms of honest and judgement-free social interactions and as a member of an already marginalized demographic such as yourself, you should know exactly how it feels to be discriminated for something that is not within your power to change, nor a matter of choice, and would therefore be wiser than to inflict this sort of discrimination upon others with sexual orientations that differ from the prevalent heteronormativity which is equal parts problematic and oppressive. I cannot tell if this is a manifestation of subconsciously unchecked privilege or simply ignorance, in which case I must implore you to educate yourself and not risk the pitfall of triggering anyone for their sexuality."  
You're pleased to see that Horuss is at a loss for words, even though you cut yourself short. Though just as his shocked expression registers do you remember that his boyfriend left him to get back together with his ex girlfriend and part of you whispers that he might be harboring reservations against bisexuals on the grounds of his broken heart, though you are quick to silence it. There is no reason to justify his offensive statement. It's certainly also not because you are taking personal offense to it, because you have found yourself attracted to people of both genders especially during your college years when you were standing in corners at parties Porrim forced you to attend, a usually full red plastic cup clutched tightly to your chest as you watched your fellow students gradually lose themselves to the alcohol and thrumming basslines. Not that you ever had felt any sort of sexual attraction towards either of them, mind, you consider yourself a perfectly asexual being. Nonsexual, not at all tangent to physical desires. You are an intellectual.  
Which is why you are almost ridiculously pleased when the man returns, a black leather jacket casually slung over his shoulder in a way that is trying too hard to seem casual and claps. Horuss only shrinks further into the corner of his cubicle.  
"Gotta say, if your mouth is that good with things that aren't words too, a night with you's oughta be paradise."  
You take a deep breath as he approaches you slowly. "Please excuse me, but I don't think I've quite caught your name."  
He quirks a rather thick eyebrow, but seems pleased. "You're right, it's only decent of me to tell you what you're gonna be screaming all night. It's Cronus. And what am I gonna call you?" When he leans in you catch a whiff of his cologne and have to will every muscle in your face not to scrunch it up.  
"Cronus what? I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm going to require your last name in order to file a report on sexual harassment."  
To your infinite dismay, all he does is laugh. Horuss shoots you a brief glance. "Ampora. It's Cronus Ampora."  
You drop your pencil before you just snap it in half. Of course. It's just your luck that a member of the CEO's family would drop by and sexually harass you. You take a deep breath to fight the urge to just wipe that shit eating grin from his face.  
"Yeah, my pops runs this shindig." He adds with a shrug.  
You can't report your boss's son. Not if you ever hope to actually make a career in this business. You stare the privileged fuck down and feel helpless anger boil up in you. This is the epitome of unfair. You have lived a life of work and all you have to show for it is an apartment you share with a woman who brings a new lover home every week and a job that barely pays any bills. Meanwhile this man gives off the arrogant air of someone who's never had to manage without just about anything but decency. And it makes you absolutely livid.  
"I don't need to know your name to know that you'd look beautiful in my bed writing under me." He'd lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper that was still easy to hear throughout the entire room. You can see Horuss wince out of the corners of your eyes, which you narrow at this asshole.  
"I'd appreciate it if you could remove yourself from my private space bubble. I have some work left to do and I would very much like to get it done today." You briefly glance at the clock, then back at him.  
"Oh sure, sure." He purrs. "Take your time. I can wait. Need a lift?"  
"You might have an easier time prowling near the clubs to pick up an intoxicated floozy rather than bothering the hard working demographic the backs of whom your family has been riding off on for decades."  
"What?"  
"The door is over there." You hiss. You're tired, your blood is boiling and you want this privileged jerk to leave already. With your nose up high, you sit yourself back down and type the last few rows of numbers into the chart. Cronus makes a few huffy sounds you refuse to pay attention to, but feel your lips curve into a smirk when he turns around and takes his leave.  
You are finished five minutes before midnight only to find that Horuss has been waiting for you. After congratulating you on telling the greasy fuck off, he apologizes for his discrimination and even offers you a ride home, which you gladly accept. Not that you'd usually allow yourself to take advantage of others like that, but you decide that you deserve this. Just this once. He drops you off in front of Porrim's, you wave and faceplant into bed for approximately six hours of sleep.  
The next morning starts like any other. Just as you're nibbling on a slice of toast, Porrim peeks out of her room to inquire when you came home last night in her raspy morning voice, only to immediately call you careless and irresponsible when you let her know, and that you're working yourself to the bone for something that's not even worth it, how you're blinded by your delusions of grandeur and should really get out and live a little already. You calmly finish eating and wash the dish of before informing her that you're in fact a great roommate for giving her so much time for herself to maintain her image as village bicycle undisturbed. As you're getting dressed, she yells at you to get fucked at least once in your life, to replace the meterstick you have up your ass with something pleasant for a change and then you leave to catch your bus and quietly refuse to get mad at her as you wait for it to arrive. Lovely. It's high time you get your own place, really.  
Work goes as usual, you arrive fifteen minutes early, just enough time to brew the first batch of coffee of many to come for this day alone and relish the peace and quiet as you gulp down the first hot sips. Your coworkers arrive relatively close to eight and you greet everyone you walk past on your way to your cubicle, where you have barely time to finish your coffee before someone gives you a new pile of papers to finish, so you thank them, naturally, and get to it.  
You have never once considered that working on an absolute minimum of sleep and spending the weekends reading literature pertaining to your work until late at night, only to wake up early in the morning so as to not mess up your schedule, might be unhealthy. You are above the average man, after all, you don't drink, smoke, have sex, eat meat exactly twice a week, you're never sick and only require little sleep to function properly. You avoid distractions, such as a social life and try not to think about happiness too much. You can still worry about that when you have made the money to be your own man. In your own apartment. Without that student loan breathing down your neck. It only makes sense that at this point in life, you're only working towards the future, when has that not been the case? You excelled in school to get into a good university, you studied hard to get a good job, now you have to work hard to secure it. It only makes sense.  
For just a second, your thoughts drift back to Cronus and his shit eating grin and you feel a pang of something red hot in your stomach area at the thought of him getting everything without having to life a hand, simply because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  
After brewing new coffee and getting yourself a new mug of fresh caffeinated goodness however, the anger subsides.  
You work calmly until lunch, looking up from the numbers exactly once to greet Horuss and exchange a few meaningless phrases in a form of smalltalk, when someone, on their way out to grab something to eat, dumps a pile of papers that need copying on your desk. You decide to do away with it right now. You're not particularly hungry, nor do you suspect that you will need the entirety of your lunch break for your home-brought meal - a sandwich and a yogurt - anyway. It's better to get it over with now.  
The copy room is pleasantly empty - a welcome side effect from working through breaks. It's a small room without any windows, illuminated by flickering neon lights and the screen of the clunky device itself. There are several rows of shelves on the wall with packages of paper and new ink cartridges, should the device decide that it requires any more of that. You always found it a bit strange how a company as modern and large as the Amporacorp would actually have a room like this. It seems so out of place. Nonetheless, you get to work. About five minutes later and halfway through the pile, you hear the door open and shut behind you. You wouldn't have paid that much of a mind in and of itself, but when you smell smoke, you swivel around. You are surprised to see Cronus having stepped this close already and instincitvely try to back away to retain at least a semblance of personal space. He has a burning cigarette between his teeth, which are bared in a grin. You're surprised you managed not to make a sound as you nearly scale the copier.  
"It's incredibly rude of you to be smoking indoors, especially in a room with as poor ventilation as this. It's similarly rude to sneak up on people, especially when they are actually working, as alien as the concept of that may seem to you. You also shouldn't approach someone first without ensuring that they are not opposed to this invasion of their private space." You go off. You don't even have to think about it, the words just come spewing from your lips. The recipient of your words shakes his head and you see his shoulders twitch before he laughs, short but harsh and lets his cigarette drop to the off-white floor and grind it into it with the heel of a shoe that probably cost more than your high school education. It leaves an ugly black smudge on the floor that was previously clean enough for you to be able to see your reflection in it - still scrawny, still stern red albino eyes and unruly white hair.   
"That better? Kankri, was it?" He approaches you still and you found yourself having climbed on the copier, its unforgiving edges pressed uncomfortably against your anatomy, leaving you feeling vulnerable and open.  
"That's stalking." You inform him, after recalling that you did, in fact, never introduce yourself to him. He acknowledges your accusation with a shrug.  
"All I did was some asking around for the exotic cutie, is all. I guess I just couldn't get you out of my head." You decide that you do not like the grin that tugs on his lips in that moment one bit. It's smug and dirty.  
"That is no excuse to distract me from my work or assault me. If anything, I don't see how your unfocused thoughts are any of my business altogether." You have to physically restrain yourself from emoting audibly when he closes the distance between you with another swaggering step and his broad chest is flush against yours. Your legs are somewhat open due to your position half on top of the copier and he has seized the opportunity to press his crotch against yours. You're not quite sure if he's hard or just the zipper and you decide that you have no interest in finding out. The position forces him to look up to meet your gaze, which may be the only part of the situation you like.  
"I'm not keeping you from anything," he purrs. "You're technically on break, aren't you? The building's near empty. That should give us a good half hour to get to know each other. All close and intimate, you know?"  
"I am not interested," you shoot back promptly, a wave of disgust washing up your spine.  
"That's harsh." He informs you. "You know I'm gonna run this joint in a few years when pops kicks the bucket, right? Might wanna be a bit nicer to me."  
The way his breath hits your neck makes bile rise in your throat and you shake your head once again, defiantly.  
"You're just a measly little intern. It's not like you're irreplacable."  
"That's blackmailig."  
"Oh no. That's just how it is." He stares at you like a challenge and you realize that you've been chewing down on your bottom lip, but you fail to stifle the gasp he draws from you as he leans in further, his lips less than inch away from your ear. His breath is damp and smells like smoke. "But you're fresh outta university, right? You probably have some loans to pay. And you can't tell me that measly Intern income is gonna cover your expenses. It's practically slavery, honestly. Isn't minimum wage just such a joke?"  
"So?" You force your voice to remain harsh and not waver, to have at least one part of you that's not utterly betraying how terrified you are of his words. This abuse of power he's so casually mentioning as he's breathing against your skin, so intimately as though you're lovers, it nearly drives tears into your eyes and you hate it. With every fiber of your body do you loathe feeling so helpless and delivered to the moods and urges of this awful man. "I d be surprised if you knew much about the struggles of my day-to-day life."  
You feel him shrug against you and shift, so he can look you in the eye again. Your traitorous eyes, that you have to force to meet his, blue like steel and at least as hard, cutting straight through your skull. He knows exactly what buttons he needs to push and you're terrified. Terrified of the things he might make you do if he keeps talking, if you allow him to keep talking to you in that soft, sensual voice, with all the empty promises and problematic solutions he is going to feed you. Terrified that you're going to believe them.  
"You're right. I've never had troubles with money. Which brings me straight to the point." You realize that you forgot to blink for the past minute and exhale a breath you didn't know you held. Your heart is beating against your ribs as though it's trying to break free and abandon you in this awful situation you had somehow allowed to progress this far. It's getting difficult to swallow.   
Cronus opens his mouth to feed you more vague threats and empty phrases that you are going to eat up because you're terrified and you're going to end up doing his bidding, to cling to that scrape of a hope that he isn't in fact going to cost you your job and ruin your entire life that you have so neatly laid out in front of you and your brain informs you that it's already made the decision, you're not going to let anything stand between you and the brighter future you remain convinced only you can bring about for the worker's class, not even a greasy brat and if he wants to fuck you in the copyroom during your lunch break, then so be it. Part of you even whispers about how exciting that's going to be. It's that repressed part you always forced back to focus on studying. Of course it would be. You always knew it would one day rear its ugly head and get in the way.   
His zipper presses painfully against your inner thigh. He is definitely hard right now. You swallow dryly.  
"The way I see it, we have two options right about now."  
You're exactly three more words away from resigning and just letting him do his awful thing when the door opens and you see an intern from the office down the hallway.  
"Oh." He says and Cronus actually turns around to glare at the poor youth.  
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt anything."  
"You did not." You assure the poor boy and utilize every bit of force remaining in your body to push Cronus off of you. It works, to your amazement, he's too shocked and suddenly out of his element to fight back. He stumbles the few steps away from you that you need to slide off the machine you hope to god isn't broken and pick up your papers. "He was just going to leave. I'll be finished here in five minutes, you can use the machine then. My apologies for the inconvenience."  
The boy nods, mouth still wide agape and you are pleased to hear Cronus shuffle out of the room.  
Five minutes of mindless copying later, during which you do not allow yourself to think about what just happened, nor why you are feeling so subtly disappointed that he had to stop, because your entire blood had been replaced by excitement and the prospect of not dying a virgin, you stare at your sandwich before putting it away. This weird queasy feeling has taken residence where your stomach used to be and you don't dare give it any food. You take a mental note to look up what to do in such awful cases of workplace harassment and maybe ask Horuss why Cronus, who doesn't even seem to be working here, keeps prowling around the offices to try and secude people.  
Due to immense difficulty focusing on your work - you'd spent the remainder of your lunch break staring at the blank walls of your cubicle and the remaining four hours of your day at your screen, with a fuzzy emptiness between your temples and the inability to form a coherent thought - you leave only half an hour past everyone else. You're suddenly very tired. Maybe you're getting sick? Due to it being Friday, everyone else has left the office on time regardless and you wind up being all alone. Shaking your head in disappointment at yourself, you turn the computer off, give the office a quick once-over to make sure nobody forgot to unplug any devices, gain some enjoyment in emptying the dishwasher full of now hot but empty mugs and then leave the building with an empty head.  
So empty, in fact, that you didn't even realize it had been raining for a good fifteen minutes and are thoroughly soaked by the time you make it to the bus stop. Your hair clings to your head, your red sweater vest feels heavy and your pants press against your wet skin. Naturally, coming home past midnight, you had neglected to check the weather forecast and hadn't packed an umbrella. Now you are standing there, in an effort to seem only mildly inconvenienced as shivers rack your spine and you hope the bus won't be much longer, as endless lines of cars slowly drive past you, everyone chasing their own weekend.  
When it rains it pours, it turns out however, when a violet sports cart pulls up to the bus stop and comes to a stop half on the sidewalk - which prompts the inconvenienced other cars on the road to honk in disapproval. The asshole driver remains unfazed and you are not even surprised any more when you realize that it's Cronus who's grinning at you from the confines of his ridiculously expensive-looking vehicle. The window closest to you is mechanically lowered so you are subjected to hear him talk.  
"Need a lift, doll?"  
You find yourself deeply missing Horuss and his indigo blue - you have no idea what it is, cars aren't exactly your forte - that was definitely not up to code with the noises it made every turn and the surprisingly techno music that had been blaring from the speakers for the entirety of the drive - you hadn't minded that, just not taken him to be the kind of person to be into that, is all, he even asked if he should turn it off, but you couldn't be bothered to be bothered at that time of the night, but he's likely already off to do whatever it is he does when he's not drowning his sorrow in work.  
"Thank you for your generous offer, but my bus is going to be here any minute now. There is no need for you to inconvenience yourself."  
Cronus nods, but he stays right where he is, much to your disdain, windows down, the beat of whatever generic rock music he's listening to audible through the sound of water hitting the pavement and engines roaring through the wet air and you can practically feel the grin on his face widen with every minute the bus doesn't show up at the end of the line of slowly moving cars and you grow wetter and colder and you're shivering and suddenly the door swings open and you're too surprised to see Cronus lunge forward and physically drag you into the pre-heated passenger seat of his car to resist. You even shut the door without even thinking about it as he try to occupy as little space as physically possible on the white leather seat.  
"You're welcome." He just nods and even flicks his cigarette out the window, before pulling yet another rowdy maneuver to get his car back on the road. You just quietly buckle up and wonder if he even expects you to tell him where you live.  
Traffic remains slow, which gives you ample time to warm up again. His heating is working overtime and by the time the office building his disappeared from sight, swallowed by fog and smog, you feel like a human being again.  
"Right. I was gonna tell you about our two options right before we were so rudely interrupted. I'm sure you remember."  
You nod placidly and contemplate to what degree you actually have options in this situation. You could probably demand he drive you home and stand a 25% chance of him actually doing so. Or you could humor him now and be rid of his pesky advances for a while. Probably.  
"Option one's, we go out, all nice and fancy and traditional. I put out and get all gentlemanly and when we're done, you put out and get nice and friendly with my dick to thank me for the wonderful night."  
The crudity in his language makes you shoot him a glare and he laughs.  
"Or we just head right home, skip the pleasantries and get to the real business."  
"How romantic." You comment dryly.  
"I'll pay you."  
You blink and turn your head to face him. "I'm sorry?"  
"You heard me. Thing is, if you wanna get laid in today's world, you need to invest some money. Dates are usually about taking them out to grab a bite and see a movie, right? The more you spend, the better your chances. But considering your situation, I'd be doing you twice the favor if I just fucked you senseless and gave you the cash right then and there, so you can watch a movie or eat something or pay your loans and the choice is yours, you dig? Win-win."  
"That's apalling. That's literally prostitution."  
"I mean," he shrugs his shoulders. "It's the world's oldest business."  
"Why don't you hit up a professional then?" Your voice is a low snarl, your annoyance filtering through it quite obviously, you hope. Cronus turns up his nose.  
"Have you even seen those dames? No thanks. I like you."  
"I'm not interested."  
"Are you sure? Like I said, I'll make it worth your while. Twice, in fact." He even raises a hand to make the victory sign with his fingers, like you aren't capable of counting. You scoff.  
"Hands on the wheel, thank you. You have an alarmingly materialistic perception of dating."  
"Tell me I'm wrong then."  
"You are wrong. Dates are about spending time together and get to know the other person." Like you would know, but that's none of his business.  
"Then why do people go to the movies? Sitting next to each other in a dark room and not even talking isn't really a ways to get to know each other. I just revolutionalized the concept."  
"Your image of human beings is derogatory to everyone involved."  
"Maybe that's what three semesters majoring in philosophy before your dad drags you by the ear into a business course and only lets you keep the music minor because you begged for it and a lifetime of people only seeing you for a walking wallet do to you."  
"You don't need to feed their misconceptions then."  
"It's easier for everyone that way." Had he been impatient to get a response out of you before, he seems entirely eager to shut you and any potentially emotional implications out. "So, what'll it be?"  
You are alarmed to find yourself considering it. Every time you close your eyes you see the amount of money you are due, years of hard work and you could reduce this weight pressing down on you with a single "yes" and letting this man have at you to satisfy his own primal desires and nobody needs to know.  
"Nobody needs to know." His voice is suddenly right beside you and when you snap out of your thoughts and realize you've been quietly murmuring them, his lips are on yours and his hand is in your hair and you can't pull away and there's a tongue skimming your bottom lip, wet and warm and it darts past your lips when you part them to make a questioning noise. It feels so weird, so alien, having a tongue in your mouth that's not yours, pressing against your own, only pulling back so he change the angle of his approach or suck or bite at your lips and when he pulls away to close the gap to car in front, you are reduced to a panting, shivering mess in his seat.  
You croak your assent with breathless, voiceless sounds and he takes the opportunity to assault your mouth the next time to line of cars slows to a halt. And again when you hit a red traffic light. The last time he sucks your breath out of you in his car is in the underground parking lot he's pulled into, underneath the huge apartment building you assume houses his dwelling. You can't even think much beyond the fact that your knees feel like jello, can't even reprimand yourself for allowing him to waltz all over you like this and just take what he wants and he hauls you into the elevator and his mouth is occupying yours again like he owns it and this can't be how you lose your virginity, can it?  
You haven't been big on kissing before. You've watched romcoms with your little brother, each curled up in blankets on opposing ends of the couch, watching heteronormative couples snog it out on screen, and maybe let a girl steal a kiss in high school, you think, a faint memory of a class trip long past, but you never cared much for it throughout your acamedic career and yet, here you are.  
Cronus' apartment is on the 23rd floor, at the very top of the building. Somehow, you're not surprised. It's a large penthouse suite, with wooden floors and entire wall panels replaced with windows. Probably very bright during the day, right now you just have a breathtaking view over the skyline of the buzzing metropolis below and above and all around you. He has an arm around you and you can feel his smug pride soak through your skin. You are pleased to note that his breathing is going harder than it was before you entered the elevator. He drags you past a generously large kitchen that you would be willing to bet he has no clue how to use, a large flat screen TV mounted amongst posters of 50s pin-up girls and musicians on one of the few walls that are actually walls, past a large aquarium the sight of which actually surprises you, exotic fish in it not so much however, into his bedroom. He's certainly not one to lose time, you think with a sigh. His bed is spacious and untidy, but at least it looks clean. The walls are littered with even more posters and you are almost certain you can see the Amporacorp building when you look out of the window and squint. He nearly stumbles over a guitar that's on the floor and you wonder how much of this is the real Cronus and how much of this stuff he keeps to seem more interesting to any potential dates he might manage to get this far. But he mentioned his music minor. You wonder if he would play for you.  
Instead, he pulls his wallet, plain and black and leather, out of the pockets of his too tight jeans and pulls out several bills to put on the nightstand. You can't see it very well in the fuzzy light emitted by the surrounding skyscrapers exclusively, but you're almost sure this is at least two weeks' worth of measly intern pay. Two weeks. Something in your gut knots up and tightens and presses against something else that makes it hard to swallow. Two weeks for what, twenty minutes of letting the guy thrust into you? You're not sure how long these kinds of things usually take. Should you say something? Should you be repulsed, by him, by yourself?  
"Ever done this before?" His voice is husky, low and grating and the knot in you constricts impossibly tighter.   
"What part of this?" You whisper back, feeling strangely breathless. For a moment, you think you might throw up. It's suddenly so serious. You can't even figure out what to do with your hands.  
He shrugs. "Fucked someone, I guess."  
You feel sheepish as you shake your head, silly and naive, like a schoolgirl. A sense of mortification settles over your limbs and Cronus simply digs through his wallet and doubles your payment.  
One month for your virginity.  
You wonder if that makes you cheap.  
He puts his wallet down beside the bills he's willing to part with for you and you listen to the sound of him undoing his belt buckle and his breathing, the only sounds in the otherwise perfectly silent room. The world seems to be spinning out of control, speed up and slow down and only revolve around the two of you in this room and your awful decision making. Eventually, after swallowing three times until you have gathered enough saliva in your mouth to feel somewhat functional, you begin undoing the buttoms of your vest, slowly tremulously. It feels so final, each movement of your fingers, each open button bringing you closer to your untimely demise. Cronus has stripped off his shirt and carelessly let it hit the floor. He makes a quiet noise of approval when he sees you disrobing as well and you avert his gaze when you see him pull down his jeans. Your head is swimming. It's hot. The room is hot. It's like you're submerged in boiling water. You feel drunk despite being painfully sober and for a moment consider if you should ask him for some alcohol to make this easier on you. But you don't and you drop your vest and your shirt and fumble with the zipper of your pants just as you hear him rustle through a drawer on the nightstand that holds the inevitable proof of how thoroughly, entirely, completely rotten you are. You are selling your body to this man, you are exchanging love for money. You're suddenly glad you skipped lunch, because the knot formerly known as your stomach turns in on itself and you fear that you are going to throw up.   
Thankfully, he doesn't say anything, surprisingly not even if you need help or changed your mind as you strip down, sit on the edge of the bed and take off your socks, because it feels silly keeping them on. You remain seated there, completely naked, staring out at the city lights and facing away from him and you're almost glad you do so. It's almost comfortable, a little chilly maybe, but still nice and then the mattress dips behind you and you can feel the intense heat of his body and you almost whine.  
There's lips working on your neck and your jaw and teeth on your earlobe and you sit still and drink it all in and try to relax against him somewhat. Big, warm hands slide over your body, feeling you up and down and dart between your legs. When his calloused fingers wrap around your slowly stiffening cock, you keen and his tongue slides over your ear.  
"How do you wanna do this?" He whispers and you'd wish he just got on with it, push you down and fuck you until he was satisfied and not ask you questions and force you to think about the situation you're in. You want to go home.  
But you don't, you just try to form words, but your tongue feels three times its usual size and your brain struggles to form words. You can swear you hear him huff, probably contemplating his luck in landing the clumsiest virgin in the land, but then his hands on you begin to pull and push and he directs you until you're kneeling on the mattress, still facing towards the window and dreamy skyline and he settles behind you.  
"This okay?"  
You nod shakily, then grab one of the lavender colored - you think, it's hard to make out in this light - pillows to cling to. He doesn't object, just trail a hand down your spine and towards your ass that is jutting out and feels the soft flesh of it. You shiver and bury your head in the pillow when suddenly cold, slick fingers slide into your crack and cover it with lube. You hadn't even hear him open the bottle. He keeps rubbing it over your hole, which clenches at the touches, which strikes you as weird, but he's arguably more experienced than you with this, so you keep quiet. And then, there it is, a brief moment of pressure and a slick finger slides into you with more ease than you thought. It's a weird, invaded feeling, having something enter you through what's supposed to be an exit and you try not to dwell on that as several muscles you were previously unaware you had clench experimentally and leave his single digit feeling that much bigger inside of you. Another push and a second finger joins the first. Goosebumps form on your skin, your back arches for a few seconds and you groan, moreso when he starts spreading and scissoring his fingers and you can feel him work you open. You wonder if you should touch yourself, if that would ease you through the arduous process, but your hands remain firmly dug into the pillow. You're almost happy you're kneeling, you think, because at this rate, you suspect your legs would have given out on you. It feels even weirder, but admittedly not necessarily bad, when he starts pumping his slick fingers in and out of you. He's weirdly quiet and you're unsure if you're grateful or terrified. He keeps pushing his fingers in and out of you until it almost doesn't feel strange any more, most of your fiery nerve ends have calmed down and you are almost satisfied with the pace, but then he pulls them out and you hear something tear and the sounds of what you suspect is plastic, and some more squelchy sounds and then something pushes against your hole that's definitely larger than his fingers and you swallow harshly.  
"Here we go."  
Suddenly, you're not so sure about this, you're not sure if you want this, if it's worth it, if you can back out, but then his hips snap forward and it presses and you try to focus on your breathing, the steady inhale and exhale and it pushes and it's inside of you. Tears spring into your eyes and you choke out a sob. He groans, but keeps pushing. And pushing and pushing. You have never been so full of anything in your life before, not even yourself and yet, he keeps going, impossibly long, until he slows to a stop and you can feel him sheathed completely inside of you. Your insides feel raw and violated and twitch against the unfamiliar length that keeps them from constricting as much as they would like, instead stretching and forcing you open. There's a faint burn to it that registers on the edges of your consciousness and you've been holding your breath again, as if the dick in your insides has pushed your lungs and other organs out of place, to make room for its massive size. You gasp and the mattress gives as he changes his stance. Suddenly, you don't want him to move any more, to just kneel there and let you be full of his cock and let that be the end of you. Your own dick is rock hard against your stomach and you worry that's only because Cronus' cock is taking up so much space inside of you that it forced all the blood out of your body into whatever appendage it could find refuge in.  
He reaches around you to wrap his fingers around you and you hiss at the unfamiliarity of the touch against your sensitive, swollen skin. You think you can feel him twitch inside of you when his touches pry soft, wet mewling sounds from you that sound absolutely disgusting in your ears. You're already close by the time he starts moving and are almost grateful that he stops touching you and pulls out, only to push back in. He keeps gliding relatively easy over your smooth, slippery skin and you grunt as he penetrates you over and over, pushing continuously deeper and panting his hot breath in the small of your back where sweat pools and you can feel the cold droplets of it running down your arms and legs, which are searing and just moan and lie there and take it. You feel weird, like you're going to be sick when he pushes in, somehow, weirdly, but then he touches something that makes your toes curl and your breath catch and you make a sound like he shocked you and you can practically feel his grin as he focuses his efforts on ramming that spot until your bones melt and you sob helplessly, stretched out on the bed and a slave to his hips. The skyline in front of your eyes grows blurry and you think you spaced out for a while there, truly senseless, because he pulls out of you and the room is suddenly fifteen degrees hotter. When you peek over your shoulder, you are relieved to find that he at least had the decency to put on a condom. It's shiny and wet from lube. You don't want to stare at his dick, you decide, so you let your gaze trail upwards. His skin is glistening with sweat and his chest is heaving. His face is red and a few sweaty, black tendrils have fallen out of his meticulously gelled hair and hang over his face. When he catches your gaze, he grins and suddenly you feel everything loose inside you tighten up. What if he decides that you enjoyed this? Will this void the transaction? Is he going to not pay you if you actually had fun?  
Part of your mind points out that there is jizz drying on your stomach, so you did undeniably come. Probably around the same time you started blacking out.  
But instead of making fun of you, he directs you to his bathroom and collapses on the bed. You spend a good two hours curled up under his shower, because your skin is crawling and the realization of what you just did is seeping in. You feel only slightly less miserable when you leave it, somewhat surprised to find that Cronus hasn't come to bother you, but notably less so when you find him sprawled out on his bed, passed out. He's still naked, but he's pulled off the condom and disposed of it somewhere, you hope. The room smells like smoke, so he probably had one. You curl up in your towel and suddenly don't know what to do with yourself. In a stroke of frustrated exhaustion, you just curl up in a corner of the bed and find yourself dozing off with relative ease.  
You stir awake from a surprisingly deep slumber in the early hours of the morning, as you're used to, to find Cronus still sleeping unperturbed. He rouses just about when you're done getting dressed and wordlessly hands you your money, which sends a pang of shame through your body. "Let's do that again sometime." He slurs on the vowels in his sleepy voice.  
You feel your face and especially ears grow hot with embarrassment. "Let's not." You mumble, but pocket the bills and awkwardly shuffle out of the apartment. Your ass feels sore and when you leave the building and take a few steps, you cringe at the sensation of lube drooling out of your worn hole and into your underwear. It's absolutely disgusting. You're not doing this again, you decide, as you stumble to locate a bus stop and get to wait half an hour for a bus that drives in the general direction of where you're headed. In the meantime, you nibble on your soggy sandwich and check your phone. Seven messages from Porrim and three missed calls from her. Dear god. You'd think that woman would have something better to do on a Friday night than to worry about you. With half a mind to respond to her, you are saved having to make that choice when your phone shuts off, due to its empty battery and you wait in silence.  
The fifteen minute walk to your apartment is the hardest part and you do not remember an instance where you have been happier than when you collapse on your bed, where you intend to spend the rest of your miserable existence.  
Unfortunately, around noon, the door to your room is swung open by your furious roommate intending to know where you've been. You claim that you've been working late until you passed out at your workplace and the cleaning personnel failed to take notice.  
While you're pretty sure she's not buying it, she does thankfully not ask any more questions. Just purses her lips and tells you to take better care of yourself.  
After you pick yourself up enough to plug your phone in - which increases the stickiness of your underwear yet again - you find that you received a message from an unknown number. It's Cronus, asking if you're up for another one of these sometime soon. You delete the message and ignore it. Ignore him. This never happened.  
It's rather easy to tell yourself that and push the thoughts of your moral ambiguity out of your mind for a while. The only time you fail to do so is when you deposit your gained money at the bank to pay off some of that debt. It's a strangely satisfying feeling, to have money. An entire months' worth, made in one night. Maybe you'll be able to live with yourself after all.  
You go about your life with a newfound appreciation for the monotone normalcy of it, greet Horuss at work, make breakfast for Porrim to thank her for her generosity of letting you live with her without demanding sexual favors in return - though you sometimes have to endure her own concupiscent escapades when you can hear them go at it through the thin walls of your bedroom -, ignore Cronus' texts and are happy to find he doesn't drop by your worklplace to bother you any more.  
This goes on for a good two weeks and safe for those moments when you're under the shower, alone and with the feeling of warm water running down your skin and find yourself palming your erection while your mind conjures up images of Cronus' toned body and his massive cock pushing inside of you and pumping you full of cum until you're shocked to find the wall splattered white, it's as though nothing happened.  
Then these thoughts resurface. They keep coming, haunting, tempting you. You wear skinny jeans to make every inappropriately popped boner immensely painful and hope to be able to condition yourself to connect erections with discomfort to keep your body from sending blood in that area between your legs and then it's Friday night and you're all alone and been feeling kind of horny all day.  
It's as though he could smell it. Weird enough that he would choose to come to the office at nine pm on a friday night. He comfortably slides behind you and pulls you out of your chair. You squawk indignantly and sit perfectly still when you are pushed back into his lip, your butt rubbing comfortably against the rail spike he is sporting. "Somehow I figured I'd find you here. Didn't you get my messages?"  
"I was busy." You hiss back, because you are suddenly reminded of what he did to you the last time you met and you loathe it.  
"Did you think about it too? Cause lemme tell you, baby, I had a hard time getting you out of my head." His voice is this low, sensual purr again and your stomach turns and suddenly constricts harshly when he rolls his hips against yours. "How bout another round?"  
"I'm at work."  
"Exactly. Why don't we put you to some actual work while we got the whole place to ourselves?"  
"That is not my job." You snarl and try to slide off his lap, but he has his arms around you and the feeling of dense, warm muscle against his form makes that feeling of helplessness rise in you again.  
"But you did so well." He practically pouts, his lips pressing against the nape of your neck.  
"That was a one time only thing. Mistakes have been made and need not be repeated."  
"Wow, okay. I was literally just doing you a favor. I gave you the fuck of a lifetime and even some spare change for it! You agreed to it, it's not like I raped you, so put a sock in it if all you're gonna do is complain about how I treated you decently. I didn't have to do either of those things and yet I went out of my way to be nice to you and this is how you repay me?"  
"You literally made me a prostitute!" You hiss right back. "That's humiliating! You don't have to live with yourself knowing you took money for letting someone take your virginity!"  
"I paid extra!"  
"I'm not a whore, Cronus."  
"Felt nice though, didn't it? Having some cash for once?" You go quiet and just quietly glare at him, but he goes on. "I'll pay you extra if you do me right now, in this office."  
You end up bent over Horuss' desk - you insisted you wouldn't be able to focus on your work ever again if he fucked you on yours, which earned you a chuckle - legs awkwardly spread and your bottom exposed. You can't believe you're doing this again. Cronus decides that you need to be punished, so he actually and unironically spanks your ass a good six times, something you can't believe he would think to be okay, before he starts lubing you up. The feeling continues to be alien, the slickness between your cheeks, then the prodding and pushing. He finds your prostrate with his fingers this time around and massages it intently until you are leaking strands of clear fluid on the cold office floor. He penetrates you and you cry out, whimper as he drives himself onward with steady thrusts, whine at his merciless assault of your joy button and are left with no voice to complain by the time you reach completion. He goes on, hooks one of your legs under his arm and somehow manages to fill you even deeper as a result. You realize he mutters streams of worthless smutty praise under his hitching breath, goes on endlessly about how tight and cute and perfect you are, taking it like a good whore and you croak a hoarse noise of dissent that you doubt he even heard. His cock throbs and fills you deeply before he erupts into the condom, which is violet, you notice, what the fuck. What a weirdly specific thing to pay attention to when shopping for preventatives.  
He pays you and you're back to feeling dirty all weekend.  
Come Monday, you find yourself unable to look Horuss in the eye. Cronus drops by after hours, just as you're cleaning up and pushes you in the corner of the copy room. You wind up taking a lot more dick in your mouth than you thought possible. It tastes like skin and whenever you suck a drop of precum from his head, a little salty. His fingers comb through your hair and you feel intoxicated by the sounds he makes, the little groans and grunts and the way his hips tremble and you have to push them back to keep him from thrusting into your mouth, but eventually, you end up letting him fuck into it regardless, because your jaw is starting to hurt and you think it's taking too long. He pays you as much for the blowjob as he does for regular fucks.  
You wonder if the bank won't notice or say anything, but they just accept your filthy money and you watch that mountain of debt dwindle away.  
Well, not quite so, but you end up seeing Cronus a lot more regularly. Always sure to make a fuss about it, but you let him drag you to his place, because you insist that workplace affairs are unprofessional and you don't want to lose your job due to his inability to keep his pants on. He asked if you could go to yours sometime and baptize the bed you got there, but the thought of Porrim finding you with him balls deep inside of you made your stomach turn, so you decline.  
Your encounters become a lot more casual, you find. You end up spending nights on the weekend, sometimes you curl up on the couch beside him to watch a movie or two before he pins you down and makes you scream his name. He seems very fond of Grease. It's not your favorite, but you blew him to it at least once and then found that the music had a nice beat to bob your head to. Cronus probably agreed, if the amount of salty-tasting clear liquid he forced you to swallow was any indication.   
You tell him stories about your time studying, especially when you see some books in a far corner of his way-too spacious apartment and he groans when he comes to the conclusion that all you did was, in fact, study, rather than attend parties and drink beer from a bong, get so high that you end up staying up all night and sneak into the wrong auditorium the morning after, because you've gotten lost. The way he describes his college years almost makes you long for yours back, just so you could do it again. You ask about his philosophy studies, because you were genuinely surprised to hear that someone like him would dabble in the detached metaphysical pondering, but he only shrugs and mumbles something about hoping there'd be hot girls, or girls interested in deep, philosophical guys like him, but all the girls cared about were musicians and the only people studying philosophy were, as it turns out, bearded man twice his age. That again makes you laugh, because it aligns perfectly with what you imagined and he waits until you're done before he asks you to rim him. You decline.  
Cronus frequently offers to pick you up from work, because he has just that much free time, but you decide that you don't need anyone knowing about your illicit affair, even though god knows none of your colleagues care enough about you to give half a damn about who or what you spend your free time doing, the only one you somewhat talk to during lunch breaks being Horuss - he and his boyfriend got back together and he was so, so happy, you didn't have the heart to tell him that it likely wasn't going to last - so he ends up calling cabs to get you safely to his place and back. He pays for them and you feel like a secret agent, so it's a win win. Porrim suspects that you have a boyfriend, but she doesn't pry, at least not you in person, though you are pretty sure you saw her going through your phone once and then mentally patted your shoulder for never replying to Cronus' texts. Meanwhile, he insists that you're getting better at sex, only to then go for a dumb joke about how practice makes perfect. You tell him to shut up and arch your back as he fucks into you. You rarely choose positions where you can see his face, but you did today and you allow your gaze to roam his muscular body, to feel his glutes with your calves, which are locked behind him to keep him in place. You rock your hips back on his dick to get as much of it inside of you as you can manage and have him rub against your prostate until you cum. You are almost halfway hard again when he finishes and to your infinite surprise, he leans down and captures your lips in a kiss when he does. The sincerety of it leaves your head reeling and your skin pull until you're almost certain your upper body is down to bare bones.  
What is happening to you?  
One night, you lie awake, your ass so sore that you have to lie on your side and you feel Cronus' hot breath brush over your cheek, as he's spooning you like a champion. You wonder if you should ask him if he knows about the parable of the boiling frog, but you don't feel like waking him. You do ask him to play for you the next morning, as you spot his guitar neatly leaned against his wardrobe and are stunned when he picks the instrument up and obliges, serenading you with cheesy love songs and works of those alternative rock bands he seems into enough to have their CDs lying around everywhere, but not enough to put up posters of them, for almost an hour before you leave.  
The company has given you some time off during late December and early January, because as it turns out, you have been working overtime and in order to avoid having to pay you extra, it's easier to just send you home. You take this opportunity to take the train back to your hometown to pay your brother and sister a visit. Cronus doesn't seem to happy when you tell him about it - curtly, as he's fucking you in a toilet stall on your last day of work. You find yourself touching his face and giving him a brief press of lips before you head out, your head reeling with oxytocine, which is the main culprit in the growing gestures of affection between you and Cronus, you suspect.   
The train ride is uneventful, you exchange a few texts with Porrim, and the welcome home is warm. It feels nice albeit a little strange sleeping in a bed that's technically yours, but only slept in like once a year. You spent more time in Cronus' bed than your own and the thought makes your face flush through every shade of red on the color spectrum.  
Christmas comes and goes, you spend a lot of time in churches, not that you didn't see it coming, that's a side effect of having a passionate preacher for a father. It doesn't snow like it used to when you were younger, but it's nice all the same. You mainly spend time with your six years younger brother, a grumpy High School Senior who doesn't want to hear any of the advice you have to share. Unsurprisingly, you find yourselves watching romcoms, like you used to. The same old movies, that bring smiles to your face and send pangs of longing straight to your groin. Watching lips crash against each other makes your fingers twitch in the direction of your phone to give Cronus a call, but you harshly reprimand yourself for your idiocy - he's not your boyfriend, he's an asshole who stole your virginity and paid you for it. The question of your romantic activities does come up once, but it's not Karkat who's asking, but your father. You nearly choke on your dinner and give him a stern glance and struggle to retain your composure. Naturally, you're far too busy for such things. He apologizes and laughs, but there's something to his smile that reminds you of the looks Porrim gives you when she tells you to get out more and not spend every second of your existence working. You remind yourself that you're having premarital gay sex and receiving money for it and that should be the hattrick of pissing your preacher dad off.  
You surreptitiously send Cronus a text on the 25th and one on the 31st and ignore all the pitiful attempts at sexting he starts in the meantime and every time, you blame it on the fact that you'd just woken up and your mind has been too fuzzy to know what you were doing and that you didn't mean to send him any messages at all.  
It's mid-January when you get back, the Friday before you have get back to work and you're feeling relaxed and yet aching somewhat. Stepping out into the crisp air that tinges your cheeks red and makes you thank Porrim for the sweater she made you for christmas and made you take home to unwrap there in peace and complain about how you don't need it and then wear it anyway, you are more than surprised to see a more than familiar looking violet sports car parked next to the bus stop you are headed for. The windows are misted over and when you cautiously knock on the door, it's still entirely possible Cronus picked up some floozy and they are engaged in hot make out sessions that he doesn't have to pay for right here, he opens it and cracks a tired smile. He refuses to tell you how long he's been waiting here for, because you only briefly mentioned the day you'd get back on, not the time, and instead hauls you into the overheated interior of his car, like he did that one time way back. You exchange wet kisses when he stops at red traffic lights and you commend him for not ravaging you in the elevator up to his apartment. He instead fucks you against the door after slamming it shut by pushing you against it. His lips are on yours almost the entire time and you find yourself not minding it one bit.  
Valentine's Day is when you first come with his name on your lips and the look he gives you after, glazed over and postcoital, but adoring you on a level that makes your insides tingle, makes you so uncomfortable that you forget your pay on the bedside table when you make like a tree and awkwardly shuffle out of his apartment.  
You tell yourself that this is wrong, wrong, wrong as you wait for the bus.  
It's almost a month until he hits you up again after that. You almost didn't expect him to. Things feel weird between you then, weirder than they used to. Make no mistake, you still let him fuck you and you still let him pay you for it, but you were back to square one, avoiding eye contact and muffling your sounds with your hand clasped over your mouth. It felt loathsome how he knew which spots to kiss, lick or nip at to make your toes curl and muscles clench to you regardless.  
Almost a year after you started selling your body to what is more likely than ever to become your future boss are you promoted. From measly intern to measly office worker. Your workplace is a lot more secure now and your income has seen a considerable raise. Cronus insists to take you out to a fancy restaurant a few towns over to celebrate and you fail to stop him. You claim it's to celebrate his recent graduation as well - and it only took eleven semesters! - and he gives you a damp kiss.  
"In lights of my recent promotion," you try to tell him, but he's busy layering your collar with kisses, the shirt having been the first article of clothing that left you before you found yourself suddenly pinned to his bed, "I am going to start looking for an apartment of my own. Porrim is likely going to move as well and it feels as though I'm the only thing holding her back."  
"Gonna need a bit pocket money?" He drags his tongue up the side of your neck like he knows you hate.  
"No, actually." It comes oddly natural. You reach down to find one of his hands and interweave your fingers with his. He stops trying to leave visible bite marks on your ear lobe and looks at you with those damned puppy dog eyes. "I won't be needing you to pay me any more."  
You watch eerily fascinated as his pink tongue slips out of his mouth to dart over his lips. "Is that it then?"  
"What do you mean?"  
His eyes flicker to your connected hands, then back to your eyes. It's unnerving. You feel the skin of your scalp pull a little. You could be rid of him now, all you needed to do is say the word and you could close this sinful chapter of your life. Your loan is reduced to peanuts, your career is coming along, your life is steadily falling into place just as you pictured it. Cronus is the only thing you hadn't planned for, a minor nuisance, you figured. You had relied on the fact that he would eventually lose interest - he's certainly not going to run out of money with how he's now going to start assisting his father at the corporation to eventually take it over. But now, you don't need him any more. You could sever this thread now and start looking for a serious relationship. Begin a new life as the Kankri Vantas you had always wanted to be.  
Instead, you tilt his chin up and capture his lips with yours. They feel good, right, warm as they mold themselves against yours. You can feel his heartbeat on your skin. You wish you had taken your pants off before, they're growing more uncomfortable with every second you're kissing him. He makes a noise into your mouth and you are overcome by immense want. The desire to have him and his silly violet condoms deep inside you already burns hot and all-consuming.  
"I mean, that I don't want you to pay me for it any more. It feels unnatural." That much is true. You leave the rest unsaid, but judging from the look he gives you, he's caught on to it anyway. Luckily, you are left with no time to wonder, because he pulls your pants down as if he's scared you might change your mind and hurries through the necessary preparations.   
You sigh deeply when he fills you. You scream his name when you come and you hold your breath when he whispers "I love you" into your ear just before he reaches his peak as well.  
Your voice nearly gives out and you stutter to sob out a soft response.  
"I love you too."  
Just what have you gotten yourself into.

**Author's Note:**

> wtf is pacing


End file.
